The Catholics try to prove their doctrine from two main sources: the works and sermons of earlyCatholic Church fathers and popes, and by a questionable historical document they regard asauthoritative called the
Protoevangelium of James.
The first source of their doctrine stems from the minds of men. Catholic teachings use sermonsand works of ancient Catholic scholars and popes, most of which lived around
A
.
D
. 250 to
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D
.400, in an attempt to add historical weight to their position. None of these arguments areaccompanied by biblical facts. They merely state their belief in sophistic language. As anexample, Pope Siricius
I
writes, “You had good reason to be horrified at the thought that anotherbirth might issue from the same virginal womb from which Christ was born according to the flesh.For the Lord Jesus would never have chosen to be born of a virgin if he had ever judged that shewould be so incontinent as to contaminate with the seed of human intercourse the birthplace of the Lord’s body, that court of the eternal king” (letter to Bishop Anysius,
A
.
D
. 392). Since theysimply state their belief or, at best, use only human reason to prove their belief, we can discardthem without any further consideration.The second and main source of Catholic dogma, the
Protoevangelium of James,
is claimed tohave been authored around
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.
D
. 120, though the real date of its authorship cannot be known. Itclaims to record a great deal of history regarding Mary and Joseph before the Bible Gospelaccounts pick it up. None of what is written in the
Protoevangelium
can be verified from the Bible;the Bible actually contradicts it in many of its passages.The Catholic Church, obtaining its doctrine from essentially its own writings, has come up againsta problem, especially in the last few hundred years. As the Bible became widely translated intovarious languages and more people became literate, many began to see that the Biblecontradicted this doctrine, and Catholics began to lose the power they had to kill all who opposedthem. They then took on the challenge of reconciling biblical references to Christ’s brothers inMatthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 with an innacurate understanding of the meaning of the word
brother.
In Matthew 13, Jesus was teaching in the temple. When He finished, the people said of Him, ” Isnot this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his
BRETHREN
, James, and Joses,and Simon, and Judas?” (verse 55). Mark records this event as well: “Is not this the carpenter,the son of Mary, the
BROTHER
of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sistershere with us? …” (Mark 6:3). The context alone provides plain evidence that Christ had actualblood brothers and sisters. The Catholic Church, however, denies the context.The Catechism—the official summary of Catholic religious doctrine (Article 500)—states that thesebrothers are actually cousins or another type of close relative born of another Mary and not the “Virgin Mary.” Catholicism reasons this since in the Hebrew language the same word used forbrother was used for cousin. However, the New Testament was not written in Hebrew; it waswritten in Greek. Other arguments are that the “brothers” in these passages were stepbrothers(making them children of Joseph from a previous marriage), that they were His cousins, or thatthis word just meant that they were of the “brotherhood of Jesus,” much like a fraternity.In the Greek text, the word “brother” is
adelphos,
which literally means “from the womb,”
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